Windows copy command return codes?

Question

I would like to test for the success/failure of a copy in a batch file, but I can't find any documentation on what if any errorlevel codes are returned. For example

copy x y if %errorlevel%. equ 1. (     echo Copy x y failed due to ...     exit /B ) else (   if %errorlevel% equ 2. (       echo Copy x y failed due to ...       exit /B    ) ... etc ... ) 

Answer 1

I'd opt for xcopy in this case since the error levels are documented (see xcopy documentation, paraphrased below):

Exit code  Description =========  ===========     0      Files were copied without error.     1      No files were found to copy.     2      The user pressed CTRL+C to terminate xcopy.     4      Initialization error occurred. There is not            enough memory or disk space, or you entered            an invalid drive name or invalid syntax on            the command line.     5      Disk write error occurred. 

In any case, xcopy is a far more powerful solution. The equivalent documentation for copy does not document the error levels.

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As an aside, you may want to rethink your use of the %errorlevel% variable. It has unexpected results, at least in some versions of Windows, if someone has explicitly done something silly like:

set errorlevel=22 

In those cases, the actual variable will be used rather than grabbing the actual error level. The "normal" way of doing this is (in decreasing order since errorlevel is a "greater than or equal to" check):

if errorlevel 2 (     echo Copy x y failed due to reason 2     exit /B  ) if errorlevel 1 (     echo Copy x y failed due to reason 1     exit /B ) 

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In addition, if you are running Win7 or Win Server 2008 or later, you should look into Robocopy, which is now the preferred mass-copy solution.